Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt.

This is Bookworm, and today my guest is Linda Spalding.

Her new novel, A Reckoning, has been published by Pantheon books.

I'm very deeply affected by this book.

The year is 1855.

It's 10 years before the official declaration of the Civil War.

It takes place in one of the Civil War. It takes place in one of the southern corners of the state of Virginia, and it's about something

that I had no idea of that there were people leaving Virginia in a sense in order to get away from the crisis

of conscience that was occurring within the South prior to the Civil War.

And what we're going to watch is an entire cast of characters,

the characters of this novel, with one major exception,

going in a wagon train west.

This is a traveling west novel from the South.

Is this historically the case?

Michael, it is. It is absolutely historically the case. In fact, it's pretty much based

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